Acer Swift Go 14
MPN: SFG14-73-585D2 reviews
Keyboard failed after less than 3 months of use. Initially the issue was intermittent so I waited until it was completely faulty and I contacted support, followed their triage to confirm the problem (3 keys not responding) and was asked to send it to them. They tested and said it had no problems, I persisted for them to try again but they continued to say it was fully functional. I was asked for a video however this was not a requirement during the initial triage and shows they do not trust my word to resolve the problem properly. It is currently in transit, so now I'll have a laptop with a known fault and am expecting de ja vu when it eventually fails again. I've previously been an advocate for Acer and most of my extended family have purchased their products based on my recommendations, but not any more.
Follow-up · It failed within two weeks of being returned to me. I recorded videos and Acer now agreed to refund my purchase. Even though they claimed it was not about trust in their customers' word, I'll let you be the judge.
Purchased in at Bing Lee Online store for $1,239.
Overall, I would recommend it for the price I got it for, especially if you usually use active noise cancelling headphones. Even the poverty panel on my unit, which is a 1200x1920 60Hz IPS touchscreen, is great. Colours are accurate with about the right level of saturation. I've never really noticed the lack of pixels, nor the lower refresh rate. Brightness is excellent, helped by the anti-reflective coating, which works quite well. Performance is quite good. I have the Core Ultra 5 125H 16/512GB model, and it keeps up with anything except for particularly demanding games, but that's an unreasonable ask for a thin n' light. The cooling is what's holding it back. There are two fans, but they're both small and placed beside one another. The former makes the laptop very loud, and the latter leaves the left side of the laptop scalding hot under load or when charging. The speakers are terrible. Wear headphones. The keyboard is pleasant, and the trackpad is surprisingly tolerable. I love the classy swift branding at the bottom of the trackpad, but the media controls are annoying and will often show up uninvited. The copilot key is annoying, and I would have preferred something else, perhaps a back button. The battery is fine, but nothing special. It lasts 7 or 8 hours with a few word documents and about 50 tabs open. The charging speed is quite rapid, although the racket is deafening. The port selection is terrific. Two USB-A 3.0s, one HDMI 2.1 (1.4 if you pay extra for the OLED for some reason), two USB-C 3.2 Gen 1s, a headphone jack and a MicroSD slot. The build is a mixed bag. The hinge, bottom and screen frame are plastic. I like that the bottom and screen frame are plastic, as the former probably keeps some of the heat away from my legs, and the latter makes the screen cheaper to repair, but the plastic hinge worsens durability. The top and sides of the base of the laptop is one piece of metal, and the lid is another. Unfortunately, the seam between plastic and metal is pretty sharp. It's thin and light enough for me.
Things I would like to see in future iterations would be fans on both sides of the laptop, metal hinges, a full-size SD card, no more media controls, better speakers, Lenovo style arrow keys, and possibly better battery optimisation.
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